The present application claims priority from Japanese Application No. 2000-123050 filed Apr. 24, 2000, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein.
This invention relates to a control system, a control device and a control method, and for example, is suitably applied to a control system, a control device, and a control method at the time when data transmission is performed between information processing devices which are connected to each other with a bus line of IEEE1344 system.
Recently, a control system has been proposed to transmit stream data between a plurality of information processing devices which are connected to each other with a high performance serial data bus of institute of electrical and electronics engineers (IEEE) 1394 system (hereinafter, referred to as an IEEE1394 bus).
In this control system, relatively large amount of data is transmitted through the IEEE1394 bus at real time and data such as a control command is transmitted without fail, thus making is possible to transmit/receive stream data, control commands and so on between the information processing devices connected with the IEEE1394 bus.
Further, in the control system, any of the plurality of information processing devices connected with the IEEE1394 bus is a controller for controlling the plurality of information processing devices.
By the way, in this kind of control system, the information processing devices connected with the IEEE1394 bus define and hold detailed specification information about internal functions of each information processing device, and the controller acquires the specification information from each information processing device, analyzes the functions of the information processing devices connected with the IEEE1394 bus, and performs processing such as changing of function settings for the information processing devices, on the basis of the analysis result, thus controlling each information processing device.
Such a controller has a bad efficiency problem in which it has to execute a lot of processes.
In view of the foregoing, an object of this invention is to provide a control system, a control device, and a control method which can efficiently and exactly control the functions of information processing devices.
The foregoing object and other objects of the invention have been achieved by the provision of a control system, a control device and a control method. The control device is connected by a data bus to at least one information processing device to be controlled. The information processing device stores definite information defining functions of the information processing device. The control device stores corresponding definite information which corresponds to the definite information stored in the information processing device, acquires the definite information from the information processing device, recognizes the functions of the information processing device on the basis of the corresponding definite information, and controls the information processing device based on the recognized functions, thus making it possible to exactly and efficiently control the functions of the information processing device.
The nature, principle and utility of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which like parts are designated by like reference numerals or characters.